The Patron And The Prophet

Norton Exhibit Chronicles The Cultivating Of A Modern American Collection.

April 3, 2005|By Candice Russell Special Correspondent

With the passion of a zealot and the persuasiveness of a salesman, Alfred Stieglitz wrote a letter in 1926 to American art collector Duncan Phillips, extolling the virtues of the painter Georgia O'Keeffe: "I know the significance of O'Keeffe's work. There is none more important being done in this country. She is the first real woman painter not only of this country, but in the world. ... And what is more, her work comes from the soil of America."

Stieglitz, an artist and esteemed photographer, might be accused of overstating his case. But as the husband of O'Keeffe, he can be forgiven the excess. At the same time, Stieglitz was also prophetic about the painter who has become undoubtedly this country's most famous female artist. The relationships between artists and one highly motivated collector are laid out in "The Stieglitz Circle at the Phillips Collection: In the American Grain," on view through May 8 at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach.

This thought-provoking, beautifully selected show from the Phillips Collection, a private museum in Washington, D.C., demonstrates how Stieglitz's efforts as a gallery owner dovetailed perfectly with Phillips' intentions to amass works representing American modernism. On view are paintings by O'Keeffe and works by contemporaries including Stieglitz, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley and John Marin. They are accompanied by various typed letters between Stieglitz and Phillips, discussing prices for certain works and a pecking order of artistic importance, according to one man or the other. The letters hint at the delicate, sometimes uneasy contact between the dealer and the wealthy patron.

Both Stieglitz (1864-1946) and Phillips (1886-1966) shared a love for European art before turning to American painters. At his New York Gallery 291, Stieglitz acquainted American audiences with Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne and Rodin. Following his own taste, Phillips began collecting modern European art including The Boating Party by Renoir, taken home for $125,000.

An American Place, a second gallery opened by Stieglitz in 1925, had a different focus, on homegrown artistic talent. When the two men met that year, they forged the beginning of a mutually profitable friendship that lasted for two decades. The selection of works at the Norton testifies to the strength of Stieglitz's convictions in supporting this group of artists, and to Phillips' foresight in underscoring Stieglitz's vision, buying work that is widely appreciated almost 100 years later. (For visitors to the nation's capital, the Phillips Collection with 2,500 works of the late 19th and 20th centuries, is still housed in the commodious family home in the Dupont Circle neighborhood.)

Structured as "mini-retrospective," according to curator Elizabeth Hutton Turner, "The Stieglitz Circle" features choice examples of each artist's mature works. Rule-breaking Arthur Dove (1880-1946) was fond of placing the sun in the dead center of his canvas, as in the oil painting Morning Sun (1935). Without the backing of Stieglitz, who gave him an annual stipend -- for which he got first choice of paintings -- Dove might be a minor footnote in art history, if that. The Phillips Collection has 55 Dove canvases, including the Milton Avery-like Cows in Pasture (1935), a wax emulsion on canvas with the animals in semi-abstract form, and Snow Thaw (1930), an oil that shows the top of a square building inundated by snow -- and oddly reminiscent of the New Mexico buildings O'Keeffe painted.

Phillips discovered Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) on his own, purchasing one of his paintings in 1914. According to press materials, he regarded Hartley's work as "a personal and powerful contribution to the outstanding traditions of American art -- romantic mysticism and robust realism."

Though the painter traveled to Europe and around the United States, the collector preferred Hartley's documentation of his native Maine including Off to the Banks (painted between 1936 and 1938), a small oil on canvas board of a sailing ship under a turbulent sky. The pedestrian sight of stacks of lumber against the deep green of a forest takes on a masculine power in his Wood Lot, Maine Woods (1939), an oil on canvas. Hartley seemed to concur with Phillips, whom he never met, in his understanding of his own role as an artist: "Maine is a strong, silent country and so I being born there am able to express it in terms of itself."